It's been one year since Israel invaded Gaza in its campaign to destroy Hamas in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks. Since then, the Biden Administration has given Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government everything it wanted and has posed little resistance as the Israeli military has killed more than 42,000 people, mostly civilians, destroyed most of the buildings and infrastructure,, and created one of the worst humanitarian crises in recent memory. The word "ceasefire" is increasingly absent from Biden's public remarks or the White House briefing room.
A new video, produced by the Quincy Institute, puts these grim statistics in sharp relief.
Khody Akhavi is Senior Video Producer at the Quincy Institute. Previously he was Head of Video for Al-Monitor and covered the White House for Al Jazeera English, as well as produced films for the network’s flagship investigative unit.
The U.S. arms industry is highly consolidated, specialized, and dependent on government contracts. Indeed, the largest U.S. military contractors are already effectively extensions of the state — and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is right to point that out.
While perhaps unexpected from the current administration, full or partial nationalization of the largest military contractors is a reasonable policy proposal worthy of serious debate. One benefit of some degree of public ownership is that it could significantly reduce the arms industry’s influence-peddling activities, particularly congressional lobbying. With a direct stake in a military firm, the government would have greater leverage to guide how a firm does business — like, for example, how much it spends on internal investment versus congressional lobbying.
Year after year, industry lobbyists secure legislative victories to raise national security spending and reduce Pentagon contract oversight. As a result, the arms industry has cultivated numerous tools to legally price gouge the Pentagon on military contracts. Contractors enjoy intellectual property rights to weapon systems developed with public funds, guaranteeing maintenance contracts for the duration of a weapon system’s life cycle — a rich revenue source given that maintenance accounts for about 70% of a weapon system’s life cycle cost, on average. It is for this reason that the military’s right to repair its own equipment is contentious.
Members of Congress working to rein in Pentagon waste face serious political headwinds. The arms industry spent nearly $151 million on lobbying and over $43 million on political contributions in 2024. As a result, the leaders of the armed services committees — which draft the annual defense policy bill – are among the highest recipients of arms industry funds in Congress. Their respective policy priorities largely align with industry’s push to reduce Pentagon contract oversight and more broadly, forever change the way the Pentagon buys weapons – to the financial benefit of industry executives and their shareholders.
To put it simply, the arms industry has the U.S. government wrapped around its finger. So while contractors do not need more taxpayer dollars to carry out their Pentagon work, a government stake in Lockheed Martin today could be cheaper than several more decades of industry bilking the government. After all, military contractors increased cash paid to their shareholders by 73% from 2010-2019 versus 2000-2009, all while decreasing spending on research and development and capital investment.
Meanwhile, evidence of industry price gouging the military abounds. Still, contractors cry wolf to Congress and lawmakers come running to pad their bottom lines, aided by trusty industry lobbyists — who some years, outnumber members of Congress on Capitol Hill.
Nationalization is by no means a silver bullet to eradicate Pentagon waste, to say nothing of unnecessary weapons production driven by strategic overreach. I will be making the case for nationalization in greater detail in an upcoming paper at the Stimson Center. Depending on how it’s carried out, partial public ownership could incentivize government officials to cash in on public service even more nakedly than they already do by moving through the revolving door or trading stocks in military firms.
So how the government goes about nationalizing military contractors has direct bearing on the government’s ability to realize its benefits. Analysts can capture this nuance even if they disagree with this particular administration’s interest in or approach to nationalization.
To put a finer point on the question of nationalization, however, it is vile that profit motive for arms production has any impact on the defense policymaking process. National defense is itself a public good, and one of the core functions of government. Full nationalization should be on the table, but even partial nationalization could help curb the financial incentives for arms production. Policymakers would have greater reason to more firmly ground their spending and acquisition decisions in realistic threat analysis — as well as public interest in avoiding both war and Pentagon waste.
As President Trump’s second term kicked off, all signs pointed to a continued upswing in U.S.-India relations. At a White House press conference in February, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke of his vision to “Make India Great Again” and how the United States under Trump would play a central role. “When it’s MAGA plus MIGA, it becomes a mega partnership for prosperity,” Modi said.
During Trump’s first term, the two populist leaders hosted rallies for each other in their respective countries and cultivated close personal ties. Aside from the Trump-Modi bromance, U.S.-Indian relations have been on a positive trajectory for over two decades, driven in part by mutual suspicion of China. But six months into his second term, Trump has taken several actions that have led to a dramatic downturn in U.S.-India relations, with India-China relations suddenly on the rise.
While the India-China thaw has received much hype, less attention has been paid to what this might mean for U.S. relations with the Global South and a more united BRICS bloc.
How did we get here?
Since the Obama era, India has played a central role in U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy. Both sides’ desire to balance against China and prevent its ascendancy as a regional hegemon has underpinned the relationship.
But as Trump ramped up efforts to resolve the Ukraine conflict, he slapped India with a 50% tariff for its Russian oil purchases, which a top U.S. official has said bankrolls Putin’s war machine. Indian officials immediately expressed outrage, with a Ministry of External Affairs statement calling the tariff “unfair, unjustified, and unreasonable.”
For India, this isn’t just about the steep tariff rate; it sees these moves as coercive meddling in Indian foreign policy and as hypocritical given Europe’s continued purchases of Russian energy. Washington’s warming ties with India’s archrival, Pakistan, and a disagreement between Trump and Modi over Trump’s role in mediating the recent India-Pakistan conflict, have also contributed to the U.S.-India rift.
India looks east
These developments have compelled India to rethink its relationships with the world’s two major powers. In rapid fashion, India has deepened a détente with China that began last year following five years of tensions stemming from a deadly 2020 border clash.
The very day that Trump announced 50% tariffs on India, Modi said he would travel to China for the first time in seven years to attend the late August summit of the China-led Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Shortly thereafter, India and China announced the resumption of direct flights between the two countries for the first time in five years.
Last week, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi traveled to New Delhi, where he met with top Indian officials, including Modi. The two sides announced deals to address ongoing border concerns, lift curbs on Chinese exports of rare earths to India, and increase trade and investment flows.
Geopolitical implications
India and China still have many disputes that they won’t resolve overnight.
“No one in Beijing or New Delhi sees their re-energized diplomacy as a fundamental strategic shift,” Daniel Markey, a China and South Asia expert at the Stimson Center, told RS. “There’s still too much distrust.”
Still, progress in the India-China bilateral relationship will likely continue if U.S.-India estrangement drags on. However, the real realignment that this slide in U.S.-India relations could impel is almost certainly to take place among Global South countries.
India has long prized its strategic autonomy, walking a thin line as it maintains close ties with both Russia and the United States and participates in Chinese-led groups like BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The more Washington pressures India to make moves that New Delhi sees as against its national interest, the more India will find common cause with China and Russia, who are building Global South platforms like BRICS to resist U.S. pressure and coercion.
“Sustained U.S. pressure will indeed drive deeper [Indian] BRICS participation,” said Sushant Singh, a lecturer on South Asian studies at Yale University and a former Indian military officer. “India increasingly sees Chinese-led frameworks as necessary alternatives to unpredictable American coercion.”
BRICS was formed in the late 2000s, in part, to push back against U.S. sanctions and economic coercion. But the group has not been explicitly anti-Western, and divides between Russia and China, on the one hand, and India and Brazil, on the other, have limited BRICS cohesion. As Washington’s chief geopolitical rivals, it’s no surprise that Beijing and Moscow see BRICS as an important component of their efforts to subvert and ultimately replace the U.S.-led international order. India and Brazil, however, have shown more interest in BRICS as a mechanism to reform and democratize the international system.
“BRICS cooperation has evolved despite the China-India conflict,” but “rising U.S.-India frictions are now shifting the boundaries of what India is prepared to pursue with China and within BRICS,” said Mihaela Papa, who leads the BRICS lab at MIT’s Center for International Studies.
Washington’s treatment of a close partner like India reinforces the concerns of many Global South countries, who see the international system as a rigged game, where the United States uses economic coercion and hypocrisy to pursue American interests to their detriment. Although Trump’s bullying has been blunter amid his tariff war, U.S. peremptory behavior is a longstanding concern.
After all, BRICS saw its first real expansion during the Biden administration, when many Global South countries pointed out Western double standards over the Ukraine and Gaza wars. BRICS membership has expanded dramatically in recent years, with the bloc now accounting for 56% of the world’s population and 44% of global GDP.
If the first six months of the Trump administration are any sign of what’s to come in the years ahead, we can expect increasing Global South solidarity. Trump has also hit Brazil with 50% tariffs in response to the prosecution of Trump ally Jair Bolsonaro. Moreover, the U.S. president has threatened an additional 10% tariff for participation in BRICS, which he says is “anti-American.” The irony, of course, is that actions like these could be the catalyst for BRICS to take a more explicitly anti-American posture.
As a new multipolar world takes shape, U.S influence will necessarily diminish. But BRICS isn’t going to usher in the United States’ imminent decline on the world stage. Still, that doesn’t mean Washington shouldn’t consider how to address its declining influence in the Global South or those countries’ desire to find alternatives to a global economic and financial system that the United States often weaponizes against them. As Ernest Hemingway once described the descent into bankruptcy, the United States’ global influence can diminish gradually, and then suddenly.
Bullying close partners like India with no regard for its national interests is sure to hasten that decline and limit the United States’ ability to address major transnational threats — like climate change, terrorism, and the challenges posed by AI. The United States could be left behind as BRICS and other Global South coalitions see Washington as nothing more than an erratic bully.
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Top photo credit: Rep. Pramila Jayapal (Joe Mabel/Creative Commons), Sen. Jeanne Shaheen ((NASA/Bill Ingalls), Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene (Gage Skidmore/Creative Commons), Sen. Angus King (U.S. Navy photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Wyatt L. Anthony)
U.S. lawmakers who may have been silent for the last 22 months are now speaking out publicly and blaming Israel for the starvation and famine conditions in the Gaza Strip.
On CBS’s Face the Nation this Sunday, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and long-time Israel supporter, slammed Jerusalem for Gaza’s growing humanitarian crisis, declaring that "Israel is starving Palestinians with impunity.” Gazans are “systematically being starved to death because Israel is refusing to allow in the humanitarian aid that people need to keep alive,” Shaheen said.
When Brennan asked whether Shaheen should have spoken out earlier she replied, “We should be doing more and we should have done more… not just democrats, but also Republicans.”
Going further than Shaheen, 14 U.S. lawmakers have called Israel’s war on Gaza a genocide to date, including 13 Democrats and one Republican.
To that end, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) — the first Republican to do so — has been front and center.
"I don't know about you, but I don't want to pay for genocide in a foreign country against a foreign people for a foreign war that I had nothing to do with," Greene said on X on Saturday. "And I will not be silent about it."
While stopping short of calling Israel’s actions a “genocide,” others have also turned up the heat and have called for halting U.S. weapons aid to Jerusalem until it reverses course.
“Israel’s actions in the conduct of the war in Gaza, especially its failure to address the unimaginable humanitarian crisis now unfolding, is an affront to human decency,” Rep. Angus King (I-Maine) declared in a statement at the end of last month. He said he would no longer support aid to Israel, “until there is a demonstrable change in the direction of Israeli policy.”
Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) wrote on X back in May: “Since the limited ceasefire ended in March, Israel has blocked the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza. Israel must restart the flow of humanitarian aid into the region.” On Monday, is office released a lengthy statement that demanded Israel release more aid and stop the expansion of settlements in the West Bank. He also suggested that he would support some ban on U.S. weapons to Israel if these things are not done.
"I urge President Trump to directly appeal to Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Israeli government to take these steps. If Israel does not take these steps, I believe it is time for the United States government to stop the sale of some offensive weapons systems to Israel as leverage to pressure Israel into taking these actions," he said.
Around the same time in May, 30 Democratic lawmakers signed a letter in May calling on President Trump to ask Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, specifically, to address Gaza’s humanitarian crisis.
“It is critical that Israel enables entry of lifesaving humanitarian aid into Gaza. We respectfully urge [Trump] to call on Prime Minister Netanyahu to immediately address this humanitarian crisis and promote lasting peace,” they wrote.
But other lawmakers continue to toe the line. Along these lines, Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) and John Thune (R-S.D.) have expressed concerns for Gaza’s hunger crisis, but stopped short of blaming Israel for it.
And although Katherine Clark (D-Mass.), the Minority Whip and No. 2 Democrat in the House of Representatives, had called Israel’s war on Gaza a genocide earlier this month, she walked back that statement in a subsequent interview, prompting AIPAC to reaffirm its support for her.
Time will tell whether changing attitudes will meaningfully impact the U.S. approach to Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip. For now, that issue is the focus of ongoing party and policy debates as Americans become increasingly critical of the offensive. For example, recent Gallup polling found only 8% of Democrats support the war, perhaps prompting the Democrats’ political shift. Another found that only 22% — both Republicans and Democrats — believe what Israel is doing in Gaza can be justified as "self defense."
Indeed, more Democrats than before voted for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) recent round of Joint Resolutions of Disapproval (JRDs) to block arms sales to Israel, although the measures ultimately failed. And the Democratic National Convention (DNC) is expected to vote Tuesday on two key Gaza-related resolutions, where one calls for a ceasefire and for Hamas to return hostages, while the second calls for a commitment to suspending aid to Israel, and for supporting a Palestinian state.
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